John 6: 2 And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.
First century paparazzi obsessed with a contraversial headline grabber? Some were.
A mystifying magician’s fan club? Some were.
Some see Jesus in a boat heading NNE from Capernaum toward Bethsaida. His boat would have remained in view from the shore, and as they follow the boat’s progress across one corner of the lake, they pursue it by walking around the coast, pointing out the boat on the lake and telling people who is in it. The crowd grows as it proceeds, but arrives near Bethdaida later than the boat with Jesus and the disciples
They were attracted, not by the man and his teaching, but by the spectacular healings they had seen with their own eyes, or had heard of from second, third or fourth hand from those who had.
I cannot remember the name of the book I read, but it went into depth on this. In Matthew, after feeding the multitudes, the masses followed him. Not because of his message but they wanted just to be fed. Jesus leaves those masses behind as well.
If you went back in time to America in the 1820’s, walked up to someone, and said, “Hey! How’s it goin’, bro?” they likely wouldn’t respond with, “Chillin’ like a villain, u?”
“The second verse seems to indicate that Jesus traveled by land.”
Why do you think that?
This series of events is recorded in all four gospels. Some questions left ambiguous in one recounting my be revealed in another. The other three references are Matthew 14:15; Mark 6:45; and Luke 9;10.
The verb tense in the original Greek is the past imperfect: “they were seeing the miracles he was doing on those being diseased [at the time].”
The time frame need not be from the time he left Capernaum to the time he arrived in the desert near Bethsaida. It could mean the miracles he was doing during his ministry. But I grant, that had the other gospels not made clear that Jesus was going by boat and the people by land, John’s account could describe Jesus walking around the lake and healing as he went.
I agree that we can’t assume the people in the first century spoke the same English we do
Nor did the people when the KJV was produced from the received Hebrew and Greek texts.
The Greek, as I commented above uses the imperfect tense “was ----ing”.
It implied the action has not stopped yet. Jesus was still healing people. See John 9:1-7.
If I say, “The bookies were offering slim odds on Mohammed Ali losing because he was winning all his fights”, that does not imply Ali was in the process of fighting at the very same time as the bookies were offering odds on his fight.
The translation of the verbs here as simple past, do not accurately convey what the Greek text says, imo.
A traditional understanding from the Greek fathers is that the feast mentioned in John 5:1 was the Jewish Pentecost (= Shavout or feast of the weeks) which occurs seven weeks after Passover and commemorates Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sanai. The references to the correct interpretation of the Jewish law in John 5:8-14 confirms this tradition.
This understanding would mean that most of year passed before the beginning of John 6, which happens around the time of the next Passover (John 6:4).
“The Ancient Galilee Boat , also known as the Jesus Boat , is an ancient fishing boat from the 1st century AD, discovered in 1986 on the north-west shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel. The remains of the boat, 27 feet (8.27 meters) long, 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) wide and with a maximum preserved height of 4.3 feet (1.3 meters), first appeared during a drought, when the waters of the Sea (actually a great fresh-water lake) receded.[”
Maybe. If the feast of the Jews mentioned as the setting for John 5 was Purim, that festival was held on 14 Adar, one month before Passover, which was held on 14 Nisan/Abib. If it was Pentecost, as you noted this feeding of 5000 would be almost 300 days or ten months later than the events of the previous chapter. I guess either is possible.
